


Nothing Like The Sun

by AuditoryCheesecake



Series: A Cheesecake's Tumblr Shorts [15]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adoribull - Freeform, Established Relationship, Fluff, Love Poems, M/M, SO MUCH FLUFF, Terrible poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 04:32:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8087374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuditoryCheesecake/pseuds/AuditoryCheesecake
Summary: Dorian wants to write poetry for the Iron Bull, but he's terribly, miserably bad at it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Shakespeare's Sonnet 130

Dorian’s not a poet. He is, perhaps, the most hopeless excuse for an amateur poet the Pavus family has ever produced. This observation was courtesy of his cousin Caria, who is an excellent poet, and insufferable because of it.

He cannot quite manage to distill his observations past wit and dry humor and into the piercing sort of truth which is the mark of true poetry. He’s never come up with the sort of lines that manage to arrest the mind and capture the imagination and stick with the reader for days or weeks afterwards. He wishes he could, desperately. He loves _reading_ that sort of poetry.

But when he puts pen to paper, to write something for Bull (as an offhand and casual example) his mind empties of anything except the most painful cliches and he’s left clutching at bad metaphors and trying to find new ways to rhyme “heart” and “art,” or “death” and “breath.”

Poetry is precise. The words seem to work best when they mean something exact and discrete, yet encompass four or five possible interpretations.

Take, for instance, all the things a poet might mean when they say “my heart.”

When Dorian tries to write poetry, it comes out generic and bland and not worthy of his name. More importantly, not worthy of someone as impossibly perfect and unique and… and…. not worthy of someone like the Iron Bull.

How does Varric do it? Dorian would ask if he weren’t sure the conversation would end in even more painful humiliation than he can experience on his own.

He suppresses the urge to set his paper aflame, and knocks his head gently but despondently against his desk instead.

Naturally, that’s when Bull materializes. Is “supernatural timing” a good poetic term? He’s been trying to find a rhyme for “single grey eye shining.”

“Bad day in the library?” Bull sits on Dorian’s bed and takes off his brace like it’s his own room. Dorian’s glad to see no trace of the wariness he once held, even here.

“The library was fine.” He shuffles his tragic attempts under some innocuous research notes. “Just stuck on some…. minor translation issues.”

“Anything I can help with?” Aggravatingly kind, this man. That’s probably why Dorian’s writing is so bad today. All his intelligent thoughts have been sucked up in how much he– adores? “Adores” is decent, as far as verbs go. He’s too distracted by his adoration to properly articulate it.

“No, no, I’m giving it up for the evening. You’re much more interesting than ancient grammarians bickering over the value of the en-dash.”

Bull laughs, and opens his arms for Dorian as he crosses the room. “Not gonna argue with that. We got a horse in this race?”

“We are opposed to the mere existence of the en-dash,” Dorian says solemnly, and kisses him.

For all that he considers himself intelligent– brilliant, in certain fields– Dorian is perfectly happy when rendered speechless by Bull’s attention. His hands, so wide and gentle, can span Dorian’s shoulders as easily as they cradle his jaw, and the scarred lines of his face are beautifully, enchantingly soft when he looks at Dorian.

This look is just for him, and every time he meets Bull’s eye and sees it he feels that deep, wonderful ache in his chest. This is where he’s meant to be: anywhere that Bull can look at him like that. He cannot honestly think of a time that he’s been happier.

He wants to tell him. Needs to tell him. It fell out of him weeks ago after holding it so close for so long, in a single word from his homeland that bubbled up in the smallest, quietest moment. It’s so much, the way that Bull looked at him, knowing and understanding and fearing, yes, but trusting too. He trusts Dorian so much…

It’s more than he’d ever dreamed he’d have but it’s not enough that Bull knows. Dorian needs to tell him. He needs to tell him in a thousand ways, every day for the rest of… however long this lasts, and Dorian hopes it lasts forever.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” Bull says softly. His fingers trace the edges of Dorian’s cheeks, and Dorian leans helplessly into his palm, kisses the soft gray skin lined with the marks and scars of weapons and battles, breathes in Bull’s singular, beautiful scent. “You’ve been working all day and you’re still looking for ways to make me happy.”

Dorian smiles, because he loves hearing Bull talk like this. The praise and caring in his words reach something in his heart that he hadn’t even realized he’d been missing, not a hole to fill but a window that only Bull can see through. The words create a nearly physical place where he has no secrets, no duties, nothing to do except give Bull more reasons to praise him.

“Amatus,” he says, less than a whisper, and Bull kisses him.

“Yeah,” Bull says gently. “I’m here, sweetheart, I’ve got you.”

“I’ve been trying,” Dorian begins, because it doesn’t need to be a surprise, he thinks Bull would love it even if he wrote a dirty limerick as long as he did it for Bull. “I’ve been trying to write a poem.”

“How’s it going?” Bull asks, and even with his eyes closed Dorian can hear him smile.

“Awfully. Terribly. I cannot think of anything I’m less suited for. I’d be more successful farming druffalo, because then at least I’d have because then at least I’d have the shit right there where I can see it.”

“I’ve always thought you had a way with words.” Bull’s hand is hot on the small of his back, tracing patterns on his skin that Dorian is fondly suspicious might be a dragon.

“Not when it matters, apparently.”

“It’s an important poem?” And now, Bull’s lips are just below his ear. Dorian shivers.

“Yes,” he sighs. It’s part frustration, part– “oh, keep doing _that_ , please.”

“The poem?” Bull prompts, the smile growing ever more evident in his tone. He gets so smug whenever he makes Dorian lose his train of thought, the captivating bastard.

“I haven’t got a single decent line,” he complains. “It has to be perfect, and it’s worse than awful.”

“What’s it about?”

“You, of course.” At some point, Dorian had shifted nearly into Bull’s lap.

“About me?” It breaks his heart, just a tiny bit, how taken aback Bull sounds. It also makes him more determined.

He forces his own eyes open and puts a hand on Bull’s horn so that he can’t turn away. “Yes. I don’t know when it’ll be finished, and I can’t promise that it won’t be utter shit, but I am writing a poem for you and about you and because of you.”

Bull, the perfect, ridiculous, fragile man, blushes.

“I don’t need poems, Kadan.” Bull kisses him. And kisses him again. 

“There are plenty of things that we do not strictly need,” Dorian says. “But one of my many notable relatives once said that love makes a poet out of any man. It’s my familial duty to prove him right.”

Bull’s expression shifts, vulnerable, a little nervous. This is why Dorian wants to write him poems; he suspects that Bull doesn’t quite believe him. He can laugh and tease, and he can show Dorian a thousand ways to say it without words, but…

“It’s my duty to prove to _you_ that he’s right.” He doesn’t let Bull look away. “It’s very important to me that you know this, Bull. I love you, and I intend to write you very bad poetry for the rest of our lives.”


End file.
